Comparison of Personality Traits, Past Work, and Technology Experience of Successful Disability Analyst Trainees

The purpose of this study was to determine factors resulting from past work experience and personality types that effect the ability of an analyst trainee to be able to meet the agency\u27s definition of success to maintain their employment

Managing a multiplicity of interests : the case of irregular migration from Libya

Libya is a significant transit country for irregular migration to Europe and is therefore the site of much effort by external policy makers, notably the European Union. External actors have been unable to formalize workable agreements with Libyan authorities to address or stop onward migration to Europe. Instead, they have been forced to develop arrangements with Libya’s neighboring countries to work around this impasse. This article examines the rhetoric behind efforts by individual European countries and the European Union to implement externally produced migration policies. From crisis narratives to invoking a humanitarian imperative to “save lives,” it is argued that these tropes justify various, at times competing, agendas. This results in almost no tangible improvement to the situation of irregular migrants or the capacity of authorities to deal with irregular migration, with one exception being that of the Libyan coast guard

What can be shown, cannot be said: Wittgenstein's conception of philosophy in the Tractatus and the Investigations

My thesis is that the say-show distinction is the basis of Ludwig Wittgenstein’s conception of philosophy in both the Tractatus Logico-Philosophicus (1921) and the Philosophical Investigations (1953).Wittgenstein said that the Investigations should be read in conjunction with the Tractatus. To understand the Tractatus we must understand the say-show distinction: the principle that "what can be shown, cannot be said". A correct interpretation of Wittgenstein's philosophy will explain the significance of the say-show distinction for the Investigations. I evaluate three available readings of the say-show distinction which fail to meet this challenge. I argue that Wittgenstein's main purpose throughout his career was to replace traditional philosophy with an alternative conception of philosophy, which can only be understood through the say-show distinction. The Tractatus and the Investigations are different attempts to present the same conception of philosophy. I describe how, in both cases, they present a distinctive account of the nature of philosophical problems, the appropriate methods of philosophy, the end result of a philosophical task and the overall aim of philosophy. I argue that my interpretation provides a correct view of the significant continuities and discontinuities between the Tractatus and the Investigations. The failure of the Tractatus was not a flaw in the conception of philosophy presented in it, nor a flaw in the say-show distinction, hi the Tractatus, Wittgenstein failed properly to implement his proposed conception of philosophy, as he remained in the grip of traditional philosophical presuppositions. The Investigations presents the same conception of philosophy, but freed from the presuppositions of the Tractatus. The say-show distinction remains the basis of Wittgenstein’s conception of philosophy in the Investigations

The new scale of occupational functional communication demands (SOFCD): developing a measure of competence required in workplace-communication-skills in jobs

A research project submitted in partial fulfilment of the requirements for a Master of Arts degree, by coursework and research report, for Organisational/Industrial Psychology in the Faculty of Humanities, University of the Witwatersrand, August 2017Organisations cannot function without communication, however, it is the effectiveness and appropriateness of the communication that is vital to organisational effectiveness. The undisputed need for the assessment of communication competence skills is evident in selection and recruitment, job profiling, performance evaluation, and the development of focused skill orientated training. However, no existing individual instrument adequately measures communicative competence in South African workplaces as a number of unique barriers to interpersonal communication within SA workplaces are unaccounted for in established conceptualisations of workplace communication competence, informing communication assessment approaches and methodologies. Thus, the overarching aim of the current research is to develop a workplace communication assessment scale of routine verbal task-related communication skills, which is contextually and representationally valid, and accommodates contextual social features of South African organisations, relevant in judgments of communication competence. In realising this aim the development of an alternative conceptualisation of SA workplace communicative competence was required. The future establishment of criterion referenced norms for specific jobs would be of practical utility to Human Resources (HR) in the customisation of organisational and job specific communication assessment tools and focused interventions. Method In Phase 1 a broad, inclusive representative item pool was reduced by frequency analysis and collapsing/deleting semantically similar items to 69 retained routine SA workplace communication behaviours. In Phase 2, the 69-item experimental scale was administered to a 303 SA working sample. Competing factor structures were evaluated according to exploratory factor analysis (EFA) model fit indices, pre and post item deletion, followed by confirmatory factor analysis (CFA) to differentiate superior model fit. Lastly, the psychometric properties of the resultant scale, in terms of convergent and divergent validity with two existing measures (CCQ (Monge, Bachman, Dillard, & Eisenberg, 1982)) and the SRC (Cupach & Spitzberg, 1981)), as well as reliability, were evaluated. Results The 63-item eight factor model demonstrated the best fit in terms of an even distribution of primary factor loading across the factors, a single non-loading item, no theoretically incompatible item crossloadings, an even distribution of variance across factors, and the most conceptually interpretable pattern of factor loadings. Additionally, Phase 2 provided evidence of the scale's content, structural, convergent, and discriminant validity, and reliability. Discussion SA respondents differentiated eight subcategories as a basis for evaluating how they communicate at work. This suggests greater dimensionality relative to other workplace communication competence measures. The differentiation of the Higher Order Language subscale (i.e. the understanding of abstract and inferential language) suggests a broader conceptualisation of workplace communication skills as required by competent communicators in SA workplaces. Conclusion This research has offered an alternative conceptualisation of workplace communication competence, and developed a valid, reliable, communication assessment scale, from diverse disciplines and theoretical orientations, that measures all dimensions of routinely occurring interactional task-related communication skills within SA workplaces. This communication competence framework facilitates the efficient production of tailored job-specific criterion referenced norms for the immediate customisation of job-specific communication assessment tools and focused interventions. The utility of the new scale extends beyond Industrial/Organisation Psychology practice to inform return to work (RTW) rehabilitation in Speech Language Pathology.XL201